Chapter 7: River Rocks

The camp sat in a birch valley four hours from the nearest road.

It had six canvas tents and a data hut with a woodstove.

A river ran loud and brown beside all of it.

Two field students met the truck.

One was tall and loud, and one was small and silent.

Both of them stared at me a moment too long.

"You're the one from the video," the tall one said.

"Yes."

"Good. We got a signal booster working, so you can watch yourself on the hut computer if you want."

"I do not want that."

"Great," he said, and grinned. "You'll fit right in."

Tobias set my duffel inside the smallest tent and read me the rules from his clipboard.

"Boots off at the hut door. Nobody walks the ridge alone. Radios on at dusk. I'm in the end tent, and nobody comes into my tent but me."

"And?"

"And I don't touch students," he said, without looking up. "It's the one rule I have never broken."

He said it flatly, a man reading out the weather.

"I wasn't planning to ask," I said.

"Good." He tucked the clipboard under his arm. "Dens first thing tomorrow. Sleep."

I did not sleep. I lay with my hand on my ribs where the bond used to be.

The raw place had changed, over nine days. It didn't burn now. It ached, a dull hollow I kept pressing like a bruise.

By dawn the whole valley was white with frost.

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